Re: Mac OS X 10.1 Dock Menu Description and APIs
Re: Mac OS X 10.1 Dock Menu Description and APIs
- Subject: Re: Mac OS X 10.1 Dock Menu Description and APIs
- From: "Ricky A. Sharp" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 17:36:46 -0500
on 8/15/2001 3:58 PM, John Geleynse at email@hidden wrote:
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> Correct me please if I am wrong, but I always thought _SERVICES_ are the way
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> to do it?!?
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> ---
>
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Certainly services are *one* way of accomplishing this, and in many cases a
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completely logical mechanism to use.
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That being said, many developers have been asking for access to Dock icon
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menu and the right side of the main menu bar to try and elevate the
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visibility of their particular solution. The Dock menu APIs were created to
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address this request and that is what my earlier posting was all about.
I view Services as things that provide common operations on data (which
depends on the current context)...whereas I view docklets/system-menus as
just shortcuts to do common actions.
Services are nice in that app developers don't need to spend tons of time
all putting in the same data processing features in their apps.
System-menus/docklets are nice in that the users can gain quicker/more
convenient access to frequently visited features. e.g. while at Motorola,
we often measured user tasks in terms of how many "taps" (taps of the
stylus) it would take to do something. Global system widgets were used to
reduce the number of taps for the most common tasks.
Another way to view it is that Services potentially share themselves across
all running applications whereas docklets/system-menus typically target a
single application.
I don't know if this makes it any clearer, but personally I do see a
difference between the two.
Rick Sharp
Instant Interactive(tm)